A blog by Grant Montgomery, co-founder of Family Care, a 501c3 that provides emergency services and sustained development for families on 5 continents. This site highlights the plight of 300,000 North Koreans who have fled their country due to the brutal oppression of a Stalinist North Korean regime, as well as those still living in North Korea.

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Tag Archives: The Beast of Revelation

The Bible describes a dictator who will achieve world dominance, this autocratic despot popularly known in Christian circles as the AntiChrist. The term used by Jesus in the Gospels translates as “Pseudo Christ” (the Greek being pseudokhristos) or “false Messiah”. (In traditional Christian belief, Jesus Christ appears in his Second Coming to Earth to face the emergence of the Antichrist figure, a single figure of concentrated evil.)

Islamic eschatology relates to this same AntiChrist as Al-Masih ad-Dajjal (Arabic for “the false messiah”). He appears pretending to be Masih (i.e. the Messiah) at a time in the future and is directly comparable to the figure of the Antichrist, as does Armilus in Jewish eschatology.

According to Biblical text: “He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.’ [2 Thessalonians 2:1–4 NRSV]

Switching now to the subject of North Korea: Although I am certainly not indicating that the Kim dynasty is or will bring forth the AntiChrist, to some degree I would suggest that the decades-long North Korean dictatorship does allow a glimpse into what the forthcoming Antichrist regime might be like.

To quote the State Department’s recent Human Rights report: “The personality cult of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il remained a virtual civil religion that provided a spiritual underpinning for the regime. Refusal on religious or other grounds to accept the leader as the supreme authority exemplifying the state and society’s needs was regarded as opposition to the national interest and continued to result in severe punishment.”

Somewhere in the area of up to 300,000 North Koreans have fled their country to China to live illegally, risking their lives to flee the starvation and oppression of Kim Jong Un’s Stalinist North Korea regime. Thankfully, many of these refugees make their way to “safe houses” set up by Christian activists who run a modern day “underground railroad” to help these refugees escape to safer countries.